SCHEMERS: A Nameless Detective Novel
Bill Pronzini
Forge Books
Mystery
ISBN: 9780765318190
Back in 1969 Bill Pronzini wrote a short story featuring a San Francisco private eye whose name we were never given. Forty years and 35 novels later, he is still in San Francisco and still nameless, except for his first name, which leaked out several books ago and appears about once or twice per novel now.
Pronzini is not as well known as some of his mystery colleagues who dominate the bestseller lists. But for those of us who write mysteries and love mysteries, we know that Pronzini is a must read. He is one of the genre’s greatest practitioners. In total, he has written over 60 novels and last year was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Pronzini richly deserved the honor.
SCHEMERS, the latest entry in the Nameless series, will not disappoint either longtime fans or new readers. In it, Nameless encounters the puzzle that writers have enjoyed playing with for decades: the locked door mystery. It is a locked door mystery about mysteries in which eight first-edition mystery novels have been stolen from a rich man’s library and the insurance claim for them is a half-million dollars. The insurance company calls in Nameless to investigate. But the library is double locked, and the key is always with the owner. Suspects soon appear.
When the series started, Pronzini was obviously paying homage to the true grand master, Dashiell Hammett, who also wrote a series about a nameless San Francisco private eye, the Continental Op. But the Op did not occupy 35 books. What is really amazing is that Pronzini managed to keep Nameless’s moniker hidden for so many books. Try writing a first person novel without using a name if you think that is easy. And if you do not closely read SCHEMERS, you will still miss his name.
But as time has gone by, Nameless has evolved to become the Everyman. He has his own place among the great fictional detectives and has aged in real time. Now he is semi-retired and has a young field operative, Jake Runyon, as well as a computer wizard, Tamara, to run his agency.
Pronzini has injected life and youth into the series, and now every Nameless novel actually brings us two investigations, since Nameless and Jake work separate cases.
In SCHEMERS, Jake is dealing with a mysterious stalker who is menacing two successful brothers. The stalker begins by desecrating the grave and remains of their father with acid, leaving behind the sign: “This is just the beginning.” And things get worse as their property is attacked with acid, and one brother is beaten and sent to the hospital. Jake must solve the case before somebody gets killed.
Any novel by Pronzini is a great read. But the genius of this series is that it is character driven. You like these people and want to read about them. The series deals with dark matters without being dark. Pronzini is excellent at writing noir, but you don’t find much of it in the Nameless books. His noir work is in his other novels, such as last year’s THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE.
Many years ago, early in my study of the genre, I learned that hard-boiled novels are ones in which the bodies pile up as the pages fly by. By that standard, SCHEMERS is not particularly hard-boiled. Nor are the Nameless stories especially violent by today’s standards. Nameless says at one point: “I’m not big on guns, even though --- or maybe because --- I own one and have had occasion to use it more than once…The hunter gene was left out of me. I like blood sports even less than guns.”
But what you do get in abundance is a well-plotted mystery with plenty of clues and false leads. As Nameless says of his locked room case: “There was nothing to catch hold of, to follow through to a definite conclusion. One big confusing, tangle of possibilities, half truths, lies, secrets.”
This makes SCHEMERS and all the Nameless novels fun to read. The reader gets to follow along with the detectives, glancing over their shoulder as they run their investigation step by step. And unlike other detective stories, our hero does not have to get knocked on the head and the story does not have to climax in a gun battle. Instead there will be a point where the old reliables --- method, opportunity and motive --- come into play and the natural order is restored, if slightly altered.
Nameless --- you probably guessed by now you are not getting his name out of me --- faces the issue of the passing of time and its impact upon him. He says: “There were times when the chaotic, permissive new world we lived in seemed a little too much for a man of my old-school sensibilities. Inexplicable, too, in so many ways. Not to mention infuriating and depressing when the larger issues --- insupportable wars, terrorism, rampant political chicanery, global warming, vicious anti-gay and anti-immigrant sentiments --- came into play. It worried me sometimes, how out of touch and inadequate the modern world made me feel. Born a generation too late, past my prime, and too old and set in my ways to make the necessary adaptations to connect with the ever-growing mess of changes and challenges.”
Writing like this is the final reason why this is one of the greatest mystery series of all time. At the end of each Nameless story, you find yourself looking forward to the next adventure. Let’s hope there are many more. SCHEMERS is a great introduction to the work of Bill Pronzini. But a warning: read it and you will want to get your hands on all 34 previous Nameless novels.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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